The Tamesis
Now that the Fall 2026 collections have hit the runways in New York’s snowdrifts, many of our big beauty predictions from last season have taken on new life. The same shade of blue marked the soft eyelids that opened Marc Jacobs’ nostalgic show this week, and soon enough, fingertips and toes were painted an escapist light sky blue at Rachel Scott’s Proenza Schouler show.
“Olson Tucker” suddenly reaches its climax, this time on Runway 7 for All Mankind; the brand is helmed by new creative director Nicola Brognano, who immediately appoints Chloë Sevigny as brand ambassador. The models who walked the runway at Brognano were all styled for Smith’s Sunday evening event at Sway with Sevigny, a downtown spot famous for its Olsen twin sightings, where every It girl’s hair was a perfect example of moving to the beat.
What’s exciting is the hint of female power. Last season’s claw-like acrylics gave way to a whole host of vampire, gothic, witchcraft and femme fatale styles on the catwalk. Hillary Taymour credits her Collina Strada show The World is a Vampire with “soul-sucking emotions”, says new Area creative director Nicholas Aburn FashionNicole Phelps said “charm The word used to mean magic. When a woman uses her power-seeking ways, they say: ‘Witch! magic! ‘That’s why glamor means control over your appearance. “
Here are our top trends from New York Fashion Friday Fashion Beauty predictions worth a closer look.
moving hair
As we predicted for 2026 (as seen in Guido Palau’s waterfall bangs at Jonathan Anderson’s Dior Haute Couture collection last month), hairstylists captured every micro and macro move on the catwalk. There were wisps of sleep on Anthony Turner’s scarf in No. 7 for All Mankind, Diega Da Silva’s waist-length waves for Ulla Johnson, and Orlando Pita’s shaggy, floaty waves for Michael Kors. Matt Benns washed more than half of the Eckhaus Latta model’s hair in a basin with Tresemmé Amplified Volume Shampoo (no conditioner) to achieve “super clean” and “very airy” hair, he explained backstage. “So when it’s walking, it’s just moving.”
goth star
Is beauty interpreting—and reinterpreting—our historical perceptions of strong women? Nail artist Sojin Oh’s XXL press-on nails captured Kim Shui’s collection like a fashion vampire making a beeline for the front row at Taymour’s Collina Strada show. Broad applications of plum-colored blackberry pigments often have gothic, femme fatale undertones: In the area where Aborn associates glamorous women with witches, makeup artist Dick Page colored the lips with Milk Makeup’s mild blackberry shade. Lii’s bizarre rubber gloves, combined with makeup artist Emi Kaneko’s red lips, seemed to embody the spirit of the protagonist of the 2013 sci-fi thriller Subcutaneous. LVMH Prize semi-finalist Zane Li chats with him FashionLaird Borrelli-Persson talks about the inspiration he got from a scene in which the film’s protagonist, played by Scarlett Johansson, is “trying to trap a man.”
Deconstruct details
In the age of AI-friendliness, imperfection and asymmetry continue to win. At Collina Strada, hairstylist Mustafa Yanaz donned giant deconstructed wigs and extensions with Bumble & Bumble Textured Mist. Dick Page made Michael Kors models wear skin so plain that the visible dark circles under their eyes literally looked angelic. For Proenza Schouler, makeup artist Thomas de Kluyver took “elements of classic makeup and deconstructed them,” he tells us FashionKiana Murden used Byredo lipstick and eyeliner backstage to create asymmetrical lip and eye poses that “distorted the face a little bit.” That matches what Scott told Phelps about how Proenza made her feel before she was named creative director: “There’s this glass between you and this woman that you’re looking at, and she’s impeccable. She’s super perfect. And the idea of perfection is kind of scary to me.”
High bun speeding
Last season, we saw updos starting to make their way back onto the runways, and this season, the style is being taken to even more impressive heights. At Anna Sui, hairstylist Garren used his own R+Co BLEU products to create mini bouffants (still a few inches tall!) to capture the “punk-to-new-romantic-wave scene at London’s Blitz nightclub,” which he gleaned from discussions with designers. Hairstylist Joey George created what he coined the “bedroom twist” for Diotima, a highly lacquered double French twist (featuring yet-to-be-launched Oribe products) as a play on Rachel Scott’s erotic themes. “Rachel doesn’t just like sexy women, she likes strong women,” George told Murden backstage. “And power is sexy, right?”
blue attitude
Blue is a feeling today; blue is a mood. For his first show at New York Fashion Week, Thomas de Kluyver swept his lids for Marc Jacobs, applying frosty blue eyeshadow from lashes to brows. Designer-darling manicurist Jin Soon Choi applied Sea Clay, a hazy sky-blue polish from her namesake line, to Proenza Schouler’s fingers and toes. At Eckhaus Latta, makeup artist Fara Homidi debuted an eyeshadow palette with sheer blue eyeshadow that she smeared on several models’ eyelids in “a chaotic shape—it was this insouciant blue eye,” she told me backstage. It’s a “wearable” way to try out shades, she says, and can actually be applied with bare fingers, “which is really cool.”
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